I do wish Keir Starmer would stop talking about ‘working people’!

Wyllow3, We're you in my sitting room at the time and thus able to confirm that I was watching GB News ( I wasn't) or indeed listening to the utterances of Liz Cundy.? The journalist I heard was male, in his sixties and spoke common sense.

buffyfly9

I wish I could tell you who the journalist was but I watch so many " talking heads" that I cannot remember. Yes, Liz Truss was a disaster but her tenure was a few days, not potentially five years!! I suspect Tarot readings, runes and the occasional seance is all we have available to discern what his policies actually are.

People with mortgages are still suffering from her brief stint as PM.

People with mortgages suffered because of others, including Gordon Brown.
Mortgages are an easy target.

MayBee70

buffyfly9

I wish I could tell you who the journalist was but I watch so many " talking heads" that I cannot remember. Yes, Liz Truss was a disaster but her tenure was a few days, not potentially five years!! I suspect Tarot readings, runes and the occasional seance is all we have available to discern what his policies actually are.

People with mortgages are still suffering from her brief stint as PM.

We did discuss election policies a great deal more on GN during the election, but to get a broad idea of policies you can still read the Labour Party Manifesto for the election to find its aims and directions.

Starmer's definition includes the following quote:

...working person is someone who goes out and earns their living with an income usually paid in pay slips every month or whatever it may be...

Note that last "whatever..." bit. In other words we are all f'd.

Grammatically, doesn't that sentence (or more accurately a sentence fragment) suggest that he is referring to someone earning their income however regularly they are paid? So a working person is someone who is paid regularly by someone else - a PAYE earner who may be salaried and paid monthly, or a wage earner who is paid weekly? Someone paid monthly, or whatever [the interval between payslips] may be. Seeing the whole sentence might help with context.

On this topic, from today’s Times…

ftm420

Starmer's definition includes the following quote:

...working person is someone who goes out and earns their living with an income usually paid in pay slips every month or whatever it may be...

Note that last "whatever..." bit. In other words we are all f'd.

😂
Am not sure even KS knows what he means.

eazybee

I disagree.
People who save money that has been earned, and taxed,should be allowed to invest it if they wish, and not be taxed again.

Do you refuse to pay VAT, working on the same reasoning?

You are not taxed on your savings, i.e, the money you 'earned'. You are taxed on the interest on your saving, or the dividends from your shares, which is money you haven't earned.

Oreo
^Am not sure even KS knows what he means.^😂

whatever it may be is a suitable phrase for KS to use to save research into all the other ways people get paid, especially those who don’t get expenses.

Or free clothes.

I wonder if the PM categorises unpaid carers as "working people"? He should because they work bloody hard and save the NHS and DWP unbelievable fortunes!

And at the severe risk of their mental health. Still, out of sight and out of mind, eh Sir K?

mae13

I wonder if the PM categorises unpaid carers as "working people"? He should because they work bloody hard and save the NHS and DWP unbelievable fortunes!

And at the severe risk of their mental health. Still, out of sight and out of mind, eh Sir K?

From the quote in Oreo’s post earlier, no, they don’t count as working people because they aren’t someone . . .
quote:

who goes out and earns their living with an income usually paid in pay slips every month or whatever it may be...

Doodledog

Grammatically, doesn't that sentence (or more accurately a sentence fragment) suggest that he is referring to someone earning their income however regularly they are paid? So a working person is someone who is paid regularly by someone else - a PAYE earner who may be salaried and paid monthly, or a wage earner who is paid weekly? Someone paid monthly, or whatever [the interval between payslips] may be. Seeing the whole sentence might help with context.

Only if he saying the same thing twice because he has already said an income usually paid in pay slips every month which would include those paid weekly, daily, on blue moon day.

lawyers are generally known for the precision of what they say. Mr Starmer is a very successful lawyer, we must assume that the 'whatever it may be' is an all purpose let out clause.

Perhaps he simply means the people who are not unemployed, but who don't have large amounts of capital behind them as savings or "family money"? I don't think you can cavill at him talking about them not being able to just "write a cheque" if they suddenly hit a disaster - that is far faster to say than describing them as transferring money from their bank account, or whatever he (or the poster) might imagine them doing if ready money is needed right away.

I seem to have missed out a few words in the previous post, which should read "describing them as not being able to transfer money from their bank account . . ."

M0nica

Doodledog

Grammatically, doesn't that sentence (or more accurately a sentence fragment) suggest that he is referring to someone earning their income however regularly they are paid? So a working person is someone who is paid regularly by someone else - a PAYE earner who may be salaried and paid monthly, or a wage earner who is paid weekly? Someone paid monthly, or whatever [the interval between payslips] may be. Seeing the whole sentence might help with context.

Only if he saying the same thing twice because he has already said an income usually paid in pay slips every month which would include those paid weekly, daily, on blue moon day.

lawyers are generally known for the precision of what they say. Mr Starmer is a very successful lawyer, we must assume that the 'whatever it may be' is an all purpose let out clause.

Maybe. But I see it as more likely to be qualifying what he'd said. Someone who is paid monthly used to be more likely to be considered middle class - a salaried person, so he wanted to include those on weekly wages, and backtracked. Again, it's difficult to tell from a sentence fragment with no context.

It can't be easy knowing the level to which everything you say will be picked over by people looking for ways to make you look like the Devil incarnate.

Successful lawyers, specifically KCs, are extremely precise in what they say, because in court or on documents they have to be, and this tends to carry over into their everyday lives. I should know, I have an extremely close relative who is KC. Starmer doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as exact in his choice of words, but maybe he is deliberately avoiding being explicit.

buffyfly9

I do wish someone would advise Starmer how to dress when he represents us on the World stage. He has had thousands of pounds given to him by his "friend" but he looks like a bag of rags in an open necked black shirt, black jacket and black glasses. I wouldn't mind if he had some decent policies and a credible front bench. A journalist said the other day that he will turn out to be the worst PM in the history of this country. God help us as nobody else is going to!

Hmm, why has the PM favoured the "casual" look and started not wearing a tie? Why does he want to be mistaken for an Israeli politician?

Or maybe this is his attempt at being Working Class.......well, it's not working!

madalene

Successful lawyers, specifically KCs, are extremely precise in what they say, because in court or on documents they have to be, and this tends to carry over into their everyday lives. I should know, I have an extremely close relative who is KC. Starmer doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as exact in his choice of words, but maybe he is deliberately avoiding being explicit.

Which is precisely what I am saying. By using 'someone paid monthly' as a definition of 'working people', and knowing that vultures circle his every utterance he realised that he's have to tighten his definition to include people paid at different intervals. Again, it would be good to see the rest of the sentence, preferably in the context of a paragraph.

I guess working people also include self-employed people, who don't usually get paid regularly, but when they've completed a job.

Allira

I wonder if billionaires just sat on their backsides and watched their coffers fill?
Or did they work hard to get where they are now?

Do working people have calloused hands?

We sometimes write a cheque.

To be perfectly honest that’s exactly what billionares do sit on their backsides on there various megayachts and various villas. Right now in the USA they seem to be fond of buying up newspapers and interfering with the editorial staff and influencing our current elections. Yes, please tax the ultra rich !

growstuff

I guess working people also include self-employed people, who don't usually get paid regularly, but when they've completed a job.

Yes, or whatever it may be

"Write a cheque" is shorthand for "Authorise the payment of the whole sum at once, without pausing to check that you have enough to cover it". It implies that the payer is certain that they can afford it, so don't need to get the biscuit tin out from under the bed to count the cash.

Elegran!
Don’t tell the whole world where I keep my savings🤭